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Do We Want All Speakers To Sound The Same ?

Cote Dazur

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If it were POSSIBLE to make all speakers sound the same...would we want that?
I would, if sound the same is replaced by sound like nothing. Why would we want the source, dac or amp to sound like nothing but not the speakers, I cannot think of any reason.
Because in reality, even the exact same pair of speaker will sound different in different room, the sound is affected by where the speakers stand in the room and where we sit, being able to make adjustments is a must, EQ, DSP, etc.... can do that.
Ultimatly, what could be better than recording x, sounding the same in every room of our house or in any house.
Ability to tailor to taste is also a must, but totally transparent speakers are not an obstacle, on the contrary, same as transparent dac and amplifier, they make it easier for the user to use EQ or DSP, to get the preferred final flavour.
 

MaxwellsEq

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The loop delay would be way too massive?
Yes, that would probably sink (sync :) ) it...

Especially if you were trying to do it by mic arrays at the listening position, since the speed of sound would come into play...
 

AlexanderM

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My feeling is simple, the measurements put the speakers in the ballpark, and then we are allowed to follow our ears!! All the speakers that measure well, don't sound the same, so people can chose what they like.
 

fineMen

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The thread title may seem a tad hyperbolic, and clearly there will be plenty of nuance involved in replying to such a question.
Dear Mr. Alias Hooper, with my current d/i/y speakers, still under construction, I'm not only able to perceive the making of the recording, but I'm forced to notice it. To make a recording is an artform in itself. My speakers, costing about 200$ a pair reveal so much of the decision making in the studio, that I'm already fed up with it. I neither like it too much, nor do I want to fall back into arbitray colorations. I accept the artificial origin of the recording.

Speaking of Toole and accuracy, one should not forget that the standard applies to (a) standardized rooms and (b) recordings that were made using the very standard. Deviations in (a) or (b) may ask for speakers departing from the standard. Since the standard was established as a median of previous so called 'home-curves' in the studios, (b) isn't too much of a concern. Anyway, many classics get remastered to comply with modern equipment. As it comes to (a) I strongly recommend the use of an equalizer, supported by basic measurement skills. Without the latter, the audiophile is a fool.

In short: speakers not, but the room energized by that speakers modulo the program played over it.
 

muza_1

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In my opinion, yes, ideally only dispersion and low end should vary to suit the room, "The sound" should be in the source as part of the artistic intent.

I know is much more complex than that but with time and software advancements maybe you could start with a neutral tonality and color it to taste (if wanted) rather than the opposite way which is much more difficult (if not impossible without measurements).

But I think that the first and more important point is to standardize the music recording industry.
 
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Digby

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Just briefly I'd like to clarify that this was intended as a joke (I thought I had made that abundently clear).
Don't worry, I (and everyone else?) understood it as such. My reply was meant as a general one, rather than a specific reply to what you wrote. Perhaps I could have been clearer? I have started threads myself that I thought were sarcastic enough in a jokey fashion that everyone would notice, but still some people took it the wrong way. I suppose on an international forum you quickly learn that comedy/subtlety doesn't always translate, even when you have (apparently) the same native language!

It seems to have missed the mark, so please accept my appologies for any unintended offence caused. I hope this can be the end of the matter.
No apology necessary, written communication has these difficulties baked into it. I thought by saying 'I have to come to Matt's defence' my continuation of your joke was obvious (it was exaggeration, he hardly needed defending from a subtle jab like that). Reading it back now, I'm not so sure.

I really just wanted to comment on the word troll. It is one of these lazy words that are thrown around left right and centre and have lost a lot of meaning. It wasn't a reply to what you had said in particular.

Personally speaking, I'd rather people risk making jokes and playful comments and potentially get it wrong, than everything get sterile and dull. A person can say something offensive, true, but others can also be too quick to take offense. The latter does seem rather common in online discussion these days.

So don't lose your comedic streak! Conversations around here get heated enough, a bit of light hearted relief is always welcome, as far as I'm concerned.
 
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MattHooper

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Dear Mr. Alias Hooper, with my current d/i/y speakers, still under construction, I'm not only able to perceive the making of the recording, but I'm forced to notice it. To make a recording is an artform in itself. My speakers, costing about 200$ a pair reveal so much of the decision making in the studio, that I'm already fed up with it. I neither like it too much, nor do I want to fall back into arbitray colorations. I accept the artificial origin of the recording.

That's interesting. For me I wouldn't choose speakers that made me feel "fed up" with recordings and which would reduce the number of music tracks I enjoyed. My aim is to increase my enjoyment - I enjoy virtually anything I play on my system.

I wonder though, are you sure your speakers are actually causing your dissatisfaction because they are "accurate?" It's been a long cliche among some audiophiles that "accurate" speakers are no fun to listen to, and that they so ruthlessly reveal the nature of recordings that one can no longer enjoy some recordings. But I am skeptical of this. A good neutral speaker should be easy to listen to and any good speaker should be able to dig out whatever a recording has to offer. I'm wondering if perhaps your speakers might measure accurately on axis, but there are some issues off axis that cause them to exaggerate "problems" in recordings?
 
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MattHooper

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Sarcasm aside, my ideal speaker will sound like no speaker (or like an invisible speaker if you wish).
I would, if sound the same is replaced by sound like nothing. Why would we want the source, dac or amp to sound like nothing but not the speakers, I cannot think of any reason.

It's weird. I can understand the idea of a "speaker sounding like nothing" in conceptual terms - equating it to reproducing a signal without any additional audible distortion, like an amp.

But in a more practical attempt to think "what it would that mean for the sound I hear from such a non-speaker" my mind sort of fails to come up with much.
The sound will always seem constrained by the speaker in my mind. (For instance, if a speaker sounds like nothing, does that imply a speaker itself poses no real world physical constraints on the sound it produces? Does that mean a little bookshelf speaker will produce sound indistinguishable from a massive PA system...???

I have found that no matter the speaker design, whether heavily "colored" or even with the most neutral speakers I've auditioned, be it Revels or active speakers like the Kii 3, once I've heard a few tracks with things like drum cymbals, sax, acoustic guitar, voices etc...I know what those instruments will sound like through those speakers from then on. There is no real surprises after that. All reproduction systems sound colored and reduced in timbral "color" relative to the real thing. So if I imagine a speaker that sounds like "nothing" what sonic consequences would that have? Not sure.

It's also an interesting question as to how it would be established the speaker sounds like "nothing." Because every design choice for a speaker has sonic consequences for "how it sounds." You are always dealing with "what type of sound this speaker will produce." The human perceptual end of the chain seems so inextricable, in a way that it isn't perhaps when we can just measure the integrity of a musical signal along a cable or DAC or whatever.

Perhaps the closest way we could determine a speaker sounding like it wasn't there would be developing a speaker that reliably can pass the live-vs-reproduced
test. If you couldn't tell the difference we could at least say that whatever is happening in measured terms, the end result is inaudible distortion in passing on the recording of those sources. I dunno. Just musing.
 

Cote Dazur

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It's also an interesting question as to how it would be established the speaker sounds like "nothing."
Indeed.
To me, without overcomplicating the process, just like other transparent pieces in the audio chain, when one item is audibly indistinguishable, when within some measurable parameters, we have achieved the goal of sounding like nothing. Not perfect, but invisible enough that any well designed item will do just as good any other well designed item.
Amps and DAC achieve that. Speakers, do not have to be indistinguishable from reality to be totally transparent, just indistinguishable from each other when certain measurable parameters are achieved, that would already be a giant step and paving the way to eventually achieve being indistinguishable from real sound.
 
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MattHooper

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Indeed.
To me, without overcomplicating the process, just like other transparent pieces in the audio chain, when one item is audibly indistinguishable, when within some measurable parameters, we have achieved the goal of sounding like nothing. Not perfect, but invisible enough that any well designed item will do just as good any other well designed item.
Amps and DAC achieve that. Speakers, do not have to be indistinguishable from reality to be totally transparent, just indistinguishable from each other when certain measurable parameters are achieved, that would already be a giant step and paving the way to eventually achieve being indistinguishable from real sound.

(As I recall) When Jim Thiel was interviewed it came up that he started designing things like amps. When asked why he eventually chose to design speakers he said that it seemed amplification and such seemed essentially solved problems in terms of signal integrity, and that it was the speakers that screwed things up, producing the most distortion. Why can't we produce a speaker that reproduces a signal like the amplifier does? So he felt that speaker design seemed to afford more space for finding improvement. (Attempting to create a speaker that was more accurate like an amplifier was one reason he sought to reproduce more perfect step response with time/phase coherence. I think it was as much an engineering challenge as anything else).

I seem to remember Peter Walker of Quad was of the same mind.
 

goat76

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"Yes" in the respect of closing the circle of confusion, if there were a kind of standard the recording engineer and I would hear similar things, and that would be good and not the random wild west we have now.

I don't think it's that easy.

The recorded material and the end product will not automatically be balanced "right" tonally-wise just because the recording engineer's system is considered to be tonally balanced. Mixing music takes a fairly long time to do and the engineer will be acclimated fast to the tonal balance of the material he's currently working on, without him re-calibrating his hearing now and then with well-known balanced reference material and will most likely end up with a result "all over the place tonally-wise" no matter how good the tonal balance is of his system.

It's the same phenomenon that happens with normal music listening. At first, when you listen to a bright-sounding record you immediately notice it, but when you get to the third song the bright sound is not that obvious anymore. The same thing happens to someone working on a music mix for a long time, most of the focus will be on the balance between the different sound objects in the mix, but the overall balance can be really off.
 

Shadrach

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Thanks for the replies so far.

If I'm reading things right, it does seem that a majority are skewing towards the idea speakers should sound the same (or very similar - neutral).

But of course the replies have come at this from different angles - some answering in terms of what they personally seek (neutral speakers - which is fairly predictable I'd think, among a majority in ASR) others suggesting it ought to be the goal of any speaker to be accurate/neutral (which if followed through implies a best case scenario where speakers sound essentially the same).

I'd say it is the normative question I'm a bit more interested in following up: the idea that speakers OUGHT to be designed to meet certain narrow goals in terms of a sonic profile (neutral). As I said, having criteria is always helpful. The question is how far does one push one's own criteria.

So for instance, the ASR reviews for speakers could simply measure different speakers and, putting together what is known about the audible consequences of different measurements, perhaps along with Amir's own listening tests, the result could be presented "This is how this speaker sounds." A non-judgemental attempt to just accurately depict the character of a speaker - the results may suggest the speaker might be of interest to the reader, or not.

But instead the speakers are rated on a relatively strict normative criteria and presented with value judgements: this is a GOOD design this is a BAD design (recommended, not recommended etc). And many ASR members seem to agree with this general criteria (the justifications for the criteria being pretty well known here).

Which, again, is completely reasonable. But everything has consequences and implications, which is one reason for this thread. Is one saying "this is the type of speaker I am seeking (or that a group of us here are seeking)," or does it go beyond that to a more normative claim that All Speaker Designers Ought To Design For This Criteria?

If the latter, it does suggest a flattening of the speaker design landscape as a laudable goal. So an important part of my question had to do with whether "we want all speakers to sound the same" in that sense - not just "what I want" but "what speaker designers OUGHT to do."

So for instance, there are audiophiles who have been exceedingly happy with all manner of speaker designs, including many that would fail the ASR criteria, and would fail any goal of getting all speakers to sound (as much as possible) the same. There are for instance devoted fans of Zu speakers, Devore, Maggies, Klipsch and on and on. Far more neutral speakers have been available, and yet many such brands find devoted, happy followings. If we choose to "flatten" the design landscape for speakers based on the more strict criteria, that implies the goal that speakers that sound like those speakers go away. The proposal that all speaker designers ought to seek essentially the same measured goals would in essence remove all sorts of much loved speaker designs from the available landscape. Would we really want to remove the choice for those speakers even though many seem to love them?

Reflecting on what I mentioned in listening to the Klipsch speakers: if all speaker designers adopted the criteria used by ASR to vet speakers, the La Scalas would never exist in that landscape. But, personally, along with many other audiophiles, I'm very glad the DO exist and that I had a chance to hear them, because to me they had some compelling qualities that I don't necessarily get from the more ASR-approved designs. I personally really like the variety of options explored by speaker designers, including ones that don't fall in to the ASR approved box.

Again, this is NOT to say a different view isn't valid. My goals don't mean your goals are "wrong" or unreasonable, and I find the ASR approach to vetting speakers perfectly reasonable and justified. I'm just investigating the implications of the different views held by ASR members (and it's founder).
Let me ask you something. If a loudspeaker that measured perfectly became available would you want to listen to it?
 

sonitus mirus

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I'd prefer a speaker that responded well to EQ for room correction with an overall response not being quite as flat as another speaker that could not be EQ'd as successfully.
 

phoenixdogfan

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Kind of a tough one to answer, suprisingly. The initial gut answer is we want our speakers to sound just like the live music event they are reproducing. Problem is, they are for the most part not reproducing a live music event. What they are reproducing instead is, in most instances, is an agglutination of sounds laid down in various tracks on a recording medium, captured in a room that is acoustically quite divergent from any live music venue, and mixed on a system unknown to the listener, and to the tastes and value judgements of the recording engineer/producer.

So what sould be reproduced, and will it sound anything like live music? Given that there are so many unknowables, the best, I think we can hope for is for the speaker to be measurable true to the source which means a flat anechoic FR, and smooth, even polar response. The rest is probably a matter of the home listener choosing how wide the directivity pattern is, what the form factor of the speaker should be, and how much bass the speaker should reproduce given cost and living arrangement constraints.

So no, all speakers will not sound alike, because we don't even for the most part have a consensus on what the original event being recorded should sound like or how to reporduce that event in differing listening venues while serving the other contraints the listener is operating under.
 
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MattHooper

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Let me ask you something. If a loudspeaker that measured perfectly became available would you want to listen to it?

I'd absolutely want to at least give such a speaker a listen! It's intriguing to think about what that would sound like compared to the current state of the art.
How much better would it sound? A lot? A little? I would expect it would sound amazing given good source material.

However, it's still possible that given all the limitations and colorations inherent in recordings themselves, I might prefer some sort of slight departure from "perfect" in a speaker (or in my amplification, as I like toobs).

Several instances come to mind. When I auditioned the well regarded active Kii 3 speakers I was very impressed especially with the way they seemed to take away the room effects to a significant degree. A sort of "not thereness" to the speaker. Still, as neato as it was, it didn't grab me as much as some other less perfect set ups, my own included at home. I also heard them at an audio show playing some well recorded vocals and, again, very clean and boxless. Yet a pair of Harbeth 30s playing vocals sounded "more like the real thing" to me at that same show. So...I dunno.

I'm often paying attention to the sound of live sound sources vs reproduced. Though normally I'm not in "audiophile mode" when at work - I'm not thinking of the "sound" of the speakers or system in the mixing theater for instance - at a recent playback for a TV show I was very impressed with the excellent work by the dialogue editor and mixers. The dialogue sounded very smooth and natural. But then after playback stopped and everyone started to talk in the room, I listened carefully to the quality of "real human voices" and...man...yeah...reproduced just not the same. There is an organic quality to a real human voice, the unique, identifiable sound of "wet damped flesh" I think Alan Shaw described it, that most sound reproduction just doesn't do. Voices through speakers tend to sound harder, more mechanical. Without direct comparison a vocal through a good pair of speakers can sound impressively detailed and vivid, but if you compare to the real thing, the deficits in density, acoustic presence, and organic timbral character become obvious.
 

MaxwellsEq

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There is an organic quality to a real human voice, the unique, identifiable sound of "wet damped flesh" I think Alan Shaw described it, that most sound reproduction just doesn't do. Voices through speakers tend to sound harder, more mechanical. Without direct comparison a vocal through a good pair of speakers can sound impressively detailed and vivid, but if you compare to the real thing, the deficits in density, acoustic presence, and organic timbral character become obvious.
I know all about BBC LS3/5A's "flaws", but a couple of times I've mistakenly assumed someone was in the control room with me when they were actually in a studio elsewhere.
 
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MattHooper

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I know all about BBC LS3/5A's "flaws", but a couple of times I've mistakenly assumed someone was in the control room with me when they were actually in a studio elsewhere.

Oh yeah! It's why I can't depart with my Spendor s3/5s! I have some vocal tracks I often use to check out speakers, among them a beautiful acapella version of Without A Song by the Carpenters. I've had plenty of speakers in my home paint a super vivid picture of the vocalists, but none sound as "human" as through the s3/5s (to my ears anyway).
 

YSC

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just want to chime in a bit more, other than music alone, sometimes in movies or games, some sort of sound effects do get you tricked for real surround sound in more neutral speakers than those with some house curves or bad directivity speakers, kind of like the rain effects, when using poor directivity speakers or say, TV sound bars, you know it's a rain effect but it don't really do that "was it really raining" feel, maybe it's the directivity error or something else let my brain easily distinguish the effect from real rain hitting the window, not sure does this really is affected but it maybe the solution to a better speaker for me
 

Putter

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While I feel like this is above my pay grade or at least my limited experience with different speakers, some questions come to mind.

Do 2 speakers with similar frequency response and dispersion sound the same if you did a double blind test using test signals or music in the same room? What if the speakers were the same model off the same assembly line? My gut says that at least some people would be able to tell the difference. This is in spite of reviews I've read where the reviewers have said this model sounded very similar to that model.

The other issue is how do speakers accurately mimic the dispersion of live instruments including the human voice. Edgar Villchur of Acoustic Research (the largest speaker company at the time produced a series of “Live versus Recorded” concerts in which live performances by musical ensembles were compared with previously taped performances played through AR stereo equipment. Musicians participating in these concerts included the Fine Arts String Quartet and classical guitarist Gustavo Lopez, as well as performances on a thirty-two foot pipe organ and an old-fashioned nickelodeon. The Washington Post featured the Live vs. Recorded concerts with a half-page article with pictures, providing free publicity for AR, in which they said that audiences were fooled over and over by the seamless transitions between live performance and sound reproduced through the AR speakers. Quote from https://auralfetish.com/pages/acoustic-research. I've forgotten how this was explained, but it had something to with the forgiving nature of the music and possibly the audience. Obviously there have been major improvements in speaker components and cabinets since then. It brings to mind the CD motto of perfect sound now and forever which was closer to the truth then in the 1980's then it was for speakers in the 1960's.
 

Mnyb

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Imho its a good goal even if it’s hard to achieve otherwise we get the kind of abominations the high end industry usually serves us :)
 
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